Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Dissecting The Most Extreme Starburst Events In The Universe With Gravitational Lensing, Patrick S. Kamienski

Doctoral Dissertations

Three billions years after the Big Bang, the rate at which galaxies in the Universe were forming stars was at its peak. Colloquially known as Cosmic Noon, this epoch (redshift z ~ 2) is crucial to our understanding of how galaxies evolve with time. Dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) offer important clues to such fueling and quenching of star formation. With extreme infrared luminosities (10¹² − 10¹⁴ solar luminosities), their inferred star formation rates are 100−10000 solar masses per year. Yet, the physical mechanisms by which they fuel this short-lived maximal starburst phase remain poorly understood. With this dissertation, …

Nearby Galaxies: Modelling Star Formation Histories And Contamination By Unresolved Background Galaxies, Hadi Papei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Galaxies are complex systems of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter which evolve over billions of years, and one of the main goals of astrophysics is to understand how these complex systems form and change. Measuring the star formation history of nearby galaxies, in which thousands of stars can be resolved individually, has provided us with a clear picture of their evolutionary history and the evolution of galaxies in general.

In this work, we have developed the first public Python package, SFHPy, to measure star formation histories of nearby galaxies using their colour-magnitude diagrams. In this algorithm, an observed colour-magnitude …

The Radial Quenching Progression Of Nearby Galaxies, Chenyu Zhao

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

In this dissertation, we explore the spatial distribution of quiescent regions within galaxies using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (SDSS-IV MaNGA). Our analysis focuses on a radial range spanning from 0.3 R e to 1.2 R e and involves the development of innovative data selection and processing methods. Through this investigation, we identify two prominent types of transition galaxies: central-star-forming galaxies (C-SF galaxies) and central-quiescent galaxies (C-Q galaxies). Notably, we observe a correlation between galaxy mass and the predominant type of transition, with more massive galaxies tending to be C-Q …